Use case: Environment- health and safety (EHS) compliance on labs

One major university in Scandinavia has a large number of laboratories, and are under stringent law and requlations to have up-to-date information of how to safely use the chemicals present. A chemical substance database (originally EcoOnline, later Workplace Safety) providing the requiered substance hazard information, using standard HTML web pages with customized links for each lab.

Since personal computer equipment is prohibited on the labs at the university (along with other personal items, food etc.) a robust and affordable way of displaying the information on the labs was sought for.

Over 300 Ipads from Apple Inc. were aquired as devices for display of chemical substance hazard information, along with other environment- health and safety information for the labs in questiion. The iPads where mounted on magnetic mound stands in the labs, and ManagdWalPlus was tailored to suit this application as a locked-down, remotely managed and monitored web browser.

The main requirements leading to the development and use of ManagdWALplus instead of using an ordinary web browser were:

ManagdWALplus does this using:

• Need to offload local support from management of iPads
• Assure that a defined lab-dependent startup-page of the chemical substance database) is presented to all new users, always, and in the same manner
• Require little to no local management, preferrably using standard endpoint management systems such as Intune.
• Alert helpdesk if the iPad or browser stops working, such as with defect charging, no mains power, defect network etc.
• High up-time, 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year
• Instant-on use, without any unnecessary turn-on or login procedure.

ManagdWALplus solves the challenges using:

• Simple centralized per-device setup of device and ManagdWALplus web browser app, using any standard EMS (endpoint management system), and automatically going to startup web pages after a per-device defineable time of non-use.
• Intune (an potentially other standard EMS/MDM/UEM) systems supporting centralized device and ManagdWALplus management.
• Alerts provided to closest helpdesk to give manual attention to iPads if charger, battery, network or device itself fails, by listening to heartbeat from ManagdWALplus in a LogStash (or any other log monitoring tool).
• High up-time assisted by monitoring device (battery status, memory usage and so on), and by a carefully crafted app.
• Instant-on supported by turning light off display in extended periods of non-use, with instant-on once operated such as touching the display, or pressing any buttons.